Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk has appointed Yad Vashem Chairman Avner Shalev as vice chairman of the International Council of the Auschwitz-Birkenau State Museum.
Founded in 2000, the Council was tasked with advising the Polish government on the preservation of the memorial sites at Auschwitz and other Nazi death camps in Poland.
The Council includes 21 members from Poland, the United States, Britain, France and Germany. It is currently chaired by historian Władysław Bartoszewski, who has received the diploma of a Righteous among the Nations from the Yad Vashem Holocaust Museum in Jerusalem.
"As time goes by, the challenges of preserving the authentic sites where the murder took place are growing," Shalev said this week, "especially in light of our desire to use them as a tool to commemorate and teach the Holocaust and shape the memory of the Holocaust in future generations."